Field operation and maintenance are essential activities in an industrial plant, especially in a chemical plant. Manufacturing processes in such a plant are usually carried out in the field having many pieces of equipment, such as control valves, pipes, storage tanks etc. A control system, for example, a Distributed Control System (DCS), is typically used to monitor and control these processes, and field operation and maintenance are used to enhance the safety and reliability of the industrial plant, which are usually the most important concerns in such a plant. Field operators or maintenance workers usually perform a large number of actions or tasks in the field and cover a huge span of the equipment. In order to perform their duties in the field which may involve complicated procedures and steps, they usually bring papers with written instruction or information to the field, and use walkie-talkie to communicate with each other and/or control system operators stationed in the remote control centre. This causes inconvenience in their work and the communication between them is hardly documented.
To facilitate the operation and maintenance work in the field, mobile devices are developed to store the digitized information of tasks to be performed and routes to be covered by the field operators or maintenance workers. However, these devices do not provide planning and optimization of the tasks and routes.
Further, the digitized information provided by these mobile devices is also static in nature and does not cater for the dynamic addition of the tasks. When possible abnormalities of the plant equipment are detected by an Asset Diagnostic System (ADS), such as a possible malfunction of a control valve, field operators or maintenance workers are usually required to perform certain tasks in addition to their routine tasks, such as investigation of the abnormality. This kind of situation is very common in the field, and in such circumstances, the static information thus results in a great level of rigidity and impedes efficient usage of resources.
Conventionally, different systems are employed for operation and maintenance functions, and different hardware and/or software tools are needed by different groups of people in the field. This also results in inefficiency in the operation of the industrial plant.